Topic: The present stands no chance against the past Posted: 28 January 2012 at 10:49am

The present stands no chance against the past

Robert Fisk

Saturday, 28 January 2012

The Palestinians are not only, it seems, an "invented people" – courtesy of
Newt Gingrich – but the only Arabs on the Mediterranean not to enjoy a Spring or
an Awakening or even a Winter.

And Benjamin Netanyahu has been boasting that he was right about Egypt and
Tunisia and Libya. He did not welcome their supposedly democratic revolutions
last year – and who, he has been asking, blames him now for his silence? And the
Israeli Prime Minister's silence, I notice, continues over Syria. Save for the
accusation that the Assad regime was involved in the attempt by Palestinian
refugees to cross the border via Golan last year – Netanyahu must be right about
that – and a passing comment in June that "the young people of Syria deserve a
better future", that's it. Israel, the beacon of democracy in the Middle East,
has nothing more to say.

For some reason, we – in the press, on television, in our parliaments – are
not discussing this silence. But, as Professor Ian Buruma pointed out recently,
the political heirs of "deeply racist traditions" are the new champions of the
Jewish state, whose policies now owe more to 19th-century ethnic chauvinism than
to Zionism's socialist roots. All kinds of strange people now give their support
to Israel. It is disturbing to note that the Oslo mass murderer, Anders Behring
Breivik, supported the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the West Bank.
That's not Israel's fault. But Republicans in America are now warning of an
Islamic Sharia law takeover in the US. It's an idea fostered, according to The
New York Times, by a 56-year-old Hasidic Jewish lawyer called David Yerushalmi
and his Society of Americans for National Existence, who now has former CIA
director James Woolsey and Republicans Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann
echoing his views. The last two have actually signed a pledge "to reject Islamic
law".

For what? Israel, which in the past could analyse events rationally, if not
always correctly, appears, too, to have lost its ability to grasp events, its
Prime Minister hiding behind self-delusional speeches when he should be
understanding the typhoon sweeping across the Arab states around him. People who
will no longer tolerate dictators are not going to accept peace treaties with an
ever more expansionist Israel – 2,000 more colonisers' homes, Netanyahu decided
last autumn, would be the latest punishment for the Palestinians who dare to
demand statehood.

Obama is also silent. When Netanyahu and the king of Saudi Arabia could line
up to plead with Obama to save Mubarak, you knew something had gone terribly
wrong. Gideon Levy, one of the finest of Israeli journalists, writes with biting
eloquence of his government's folly, its failure to see that Arab democracy is a
cause for good, not bad, that its relationship with the United States is – in a
grim and almost colonial way – even more dangerous to Israel. And, all the
while, the settlements continue. Which is why the Palestinians will not resume
peace talks with Israel under the grubby neutrality of the United States.

Liberal Jews in America are ever more outraged at this phenomenon. They have
often seen something faintly fascist about the right in Israel. Indeed, I have a
letter beside me as I write, sent to The New York Times on 2 December 1948,
warning of the visit to the US of the young Menachem Begin whose "Freedom
Party", said the letter's authors, was "closely akin in its organization,
methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist
parties". Among the authors of this letter was Albert Einstein. Today, brave
Israeli leftists like Miko Peled, son of the legendary Israeli General Matti
Peled, have been touring the States, trying to warn of the dangers presented by
Israel. In a recent speech, he described the fearful start of the bombardment of
Gaza on 27 December 2008 (total dead about 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis)
as "a date that will forever be etched in our memory as one of the darkest and
most shameful days in the long history of the Jewish people".

Now, said Peled, at Silwan just outside East Jerusalem, thousands of
Palestinians may be evicted from their homes "so that Israel can build a park to
glorify a conquest that took place 3,000 years ago, never mind that not a shred
of scientific evidence exists that such a king (David) ever lived, any more than
there is evidence the world was created in six days. The past trumps the present
in Israel – a state that wants to eliminate the existence of people who live on
their land to solidify the myth of a glorious past". Strong stuff indeed.

But is it any surprise that the Palestinians believe this when the president
who told them they deserve a state vetoes their demand for statehood at the
United Nations, while his country deprives them of millions of dollars for
daring to believe him, withdraws its funding from Unesco when it bestows a kind
of statehood on the Palestinians – and then remains silent when Israel says it
will keep money legally owed to the Palestinians of the West Bank? But since
Obama's re-election counts for more than "Palestine", what chance is there of
peace in the Middle East? Maybe Israel is ensuring that the past also trumps the
present in the United States. If only we could ask the one rabbi Netanyahu chose
to quote in his UN speech against Palestinian statehood last year: the very same
rabbi who inspired the murderer Baruch Goldstein to kill so many Palestinians 18
years ago.

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot create polls in this forumYou cannot vote in polls in this forum

Disclaimer:
The opinions expressed herein contain positions and viewpoints that are not necessarily those of IslamiCity. This forum is offered to stimulate dialogue and discussion in our continuing mission of being an educational organization.
If there is any issue with any of the postings please email to icforum at islamicity.com or if you are a forum's member you can use the report button.